Billion UK Forum

I was very disappointed when I got my 7800DXL to discover that Schedule Control or Time Schedule didn't allow me to turn off Internet access for certain devices (my daughter) at certain times of the day. I looked at Security Time Restriction and that was clumsy and inconvenient (see below for why).

My daughter has an iPad and wifi enabled phone and she is, let's say, chronologically challenged For most of the time, if we don't remind her that's it's bed time at 10pm, she'll still be Facebooking or whatever when we go to bed at 11pm.

If I turn off wifi using Time Schedule under Advanced Setup, we all suffer. Similarly under Schedule Control under each Wireless band.

Then I had a bright idea. Now I'm sure some of you will say, "hey that's old news". Well, if you have any other old tips, please share with us

What I did was to set up one of the Virtual Guest Access Points under each Wireless band to have the same tight security as the main SSID AP. I gave it a SSID name relevant to it's purpose so it could be easily identified, set the number of Max Clients for it to 2, and set up the MAC Filter for it. Now Schedule Control was easy. I could leave the main wifi SSID Always On but control the Virtual APs as I wished.

My daughter's devices are only set up for those 2 Wireless dual band Virtual APs and if she tries to connect to the other SSIDs she has to input a 64 hexadecimal character password which is my secret

Unless I'm missing something (please tell me!) it seems to work OK and the disappearance of the Internet is a convenient reminder (if we forget) that's it's bedtime

Can you not have a firewall rule to drop all packets from a particular IP address/range within a specified time slot?

I used to use a 7800n but as that's not connected now I can't be sure if it's in the firewall section or elsewhere.

If you used the Billion as the DHCP server & all those that were allowed unfettered access were within a tight range then even if she tried to a assign her own IP address that wouldn't work.

Yes, there is a Time Restriction setting in Security and at first sight seems to do exactly what I want. I did look at it but it has several problems.
Firstly, there is no edit function. You either have the rule set or delete it. So, in the school holidays say, I can't amend the times - I have to delete the rule and make a new one.
Secondly, the Start and Stop times don't really work as I wanted. I am making a rule to STOP access, so in my case I have to set the Start at 22:00 and the Stop at 23:59 AND then make another rule to cover the 00:00 period to the next morning on time. That's 2 rules.
Thirdly, I need a rule for school days and weekend. That's another 2 rules.
Fourthly, I'd need rules for each of her 2 devices as the rules are MAC address controlled. So that's 8 rules!
I can do all that on the one rule in Wireless Schedule Control.
It is clumsy and my method is more convenient for me.

Just looked at it again and an Edit button has appeared. I'm sure it wasn't there before, must be the new firmware.
Hmmm, still 8 rules though as opposed to one.

+1 (@m-a-r-k)

I have done exactly the same for my kids, similarly chronologically challenged. Dedicated SSID for them (with time schedules defined). Unlimited for me and the wife. Bawahahaha! One day kids, when you grow up, all this internet access will be yours. But for now, its lights out at 8pm.

/Draconian Dad

I just received the DXL after having a N. (had a Draytek, ASUS and NETGEAR in between...had to come back to Billion once this dual band became available)
I set up 2 x 2G wifi with mac filtering for my eldest (who is 14). One for his gadgets, one for his laptop. The gadgets go off at 19:30. The laptop at 21:00.
Works for me, but it is limiting as you can only set up 2 schedules per wifi..so one for the week day and one for the weekend. Again, it is limited as I would like to be able to schedule mutliple times in the day when it goes on and off...lunch time, dinner time for example.

Hopefully Billion will bring out an update to add greater control over wifi 'on' times and equally mac address schedules too.

Other than that I really like the Billion.

Could you not use Security... Time Restriction as well as the Wifi Schedule Control? Could be fiddly and inconvenient but worth a look if you want to turn Wifi off for short periods.